WHAT IT MEANSThere’s a real desire to see unstructuredplay extend from childhood well intoadulthood. Nine in 10 American andBritish adults agreed that “play shouldnot only be a part of children’s lives butadults’ lives, too.” No wonder: There’s awistfulness and nostalgia attached to playand everything t hat it suggests, with 78%saying they wish they could recapturesome of the imagination, fun andcreativity of childhood and 74% sayingthey miss being able to play like a childwith no rules, boundaries or restrictions.

WHAT IT MEANSThere’s a real

WHAT WE’LL COVERMethodologyPlay As a
Competitive Advantage •Defining Play •Benefits of Play •Impediments to Play •Manifestations •What It MeansAppendix •More About Our Experts/Influencers •Additional Charts

METHODOLOGYSONAR™All of our trend reports
are the result of quantitative, qualitative and deskresearch conducted by JWTIntelligence throughout the year. Specificallyfor this report, we conducted a quantitative study in the U.S. and the U.K.using SONAR™, JWT’s proprietary online tool, from May 31-June 4, 2012.We surveyed 503 Americans and 503 Britons aged 18-plus.

3 GEERATION GOPLAY AS A
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGEAdults will increasingly adopt for themselves the revitalized idea that kidsshould have plenty of unstructured play to balance out today’s plethora oforganized and tech-based activities. In an age when people feel they can’tspare time for pursuits that don’t have specific goals attached, there will bea growing realization that unstructured time begets more imagination,creativity and innovation—all competitive advantages. Image credit: asterix611

PLAY AS A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
(cont’d.) DEFINING PLAYThis report defines play in its purest sense, as recreational activity. Play isabout doing something simply for the fun of it—no scores or goals attached.No rules and no guidelines. In fact, play is purposeless. To ascribe purposetakes the joy out of it. Play is “a free activity standing quite consciously outside ‘ordinary’ life as being ‘not serious’ but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly.” —Dutch historian JOHAN HUIZINGA, Homo Ludens An essential component of play is its frivolity; biologists generally use phrases like ‘apparently purposeless activity’ in their definitions of play —Robin Marantz Henig, “Taking Play Seriously,” The New York Times, Feb. 17, 2008

PLAY AS A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
(cont’d.) DEFINING PLAY (cont’d.) The problem is that to insist on [play’s] Play is one of those things we tend to benefits risks violating the spirit, if not take for granted until we miss it. It is the very meaning, of play. … One plays much like breathing or dreaming inbecause it’s fun to do so, not because of any the way it fits seamlessly, invisibly, into a healthyinstrumental advantage it may yield. The point life. It is a natural capacity of the human mind.isn’t to perform well or to master a skill, even As with breathing, we do it effortlessly. And asthough those things might end up happening. … with dreaming, while we can be totally immersedPlay, then, is about process not product. It has no in play, we often forget about it when we aregoal other than itself. And among the external done. To try to find the point in play is to missgoals that are inconsistent with play is a the point of it. Play, after all, has no point; it’sdeliberate effort to do something better or faster purposeless.”than someone else. If you’re keeping score—in —MARK EPSTEIN, M.D., “Play’s the Thing,”fact, if you’re competing at all— then what you’re O, The Oprah Magazine, May 2002doing isn’t play.” —author and lecturer ALFIE KOHN, “The Point of Play Is That It Has No Point,” Big Think, Dec. 3, 2011

PLAY AS A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
(cont’d.) PROPERTIES OF PLAYApparently purposeless: Done for its own sake.Voluntary: It is not obligatory.Inherent attraction: It’s fun, and it makes us feel good.Freedom from time: When fully engaged in play, we lose a sense of the passage oftime.Diminished consciousness of self: We stop worrying about whether we look good orawkward, smart or stupid.Improvisational potential: We’re not locked into a rigid way of doing things and aretherefore open to serendipity and chance. The result? We stumble on new behaviors,thoughts, strategies, movements or ways of being.Continuation desire: We desire to keep doing it, and the pleasure of the experiencedrives that desire. Derived from Play, by Stuart Brown, M.D., founder of the National Institute for Play, with Christopher Vaughan

BENEFITS OF PLAY Play isn’t
a luxury—it’s a necessity. Play is as important to our physical and mental health as getting enoughsleep, eating well and exercising. Play teaches ushow to manage and transform our ‘negative’emotions and experiences. It superchargeslearning, helps us relieve stress and connects usto others and the world around us. Play can alsomake work more productive and pleasurable.” —GINA KEMP, MELINDA SMITH, BERNIE DEKOVEN and JEANNE SEGAL, “Play, Creativity and Lifelong Learning: Why Play Matters for Both Kids and Adults,” Helpguide.org, February 2012

BENEFITS OF PLAY (cont’d.) There’s
this certain confidence that comes from unstructured play. It’s like, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing. It just feels good. I’m just following this thing until it tells me where it’s going.’ A lot of people can’t deal with that because the whole world tells you, when you go to kung fu lessons or violin practice or whatever you do, at the end of it you’re supposed to be better. And the whole thing about creative work is that you just don’t know what’s going to happen ’cause you can’t guarantee that you’re going to have a final product.” —AUSTIN KLEON, artist and author of Steal Like an Artist

BENEFITS OF PLAY (cont’d.) Look
at life without play, and it’s not much of a life. If you think of all the things we do that are play- related and erase those, it’s pretty hard to keep going. [Without play,] there’s a sense of dullness, lassitude and pessimism, which doesn’t work well in the world we live.” —STUART BROWN, founder of the National Institute for Play

BENEFITS OF PLAY (cont’d.) Through
play, an individual avoids what [Patrick Bateson, a We’re living in a world that is Cambridge University biologist changing so quickly. Things thatand prominent play scholar] called the lure were the right answer are noof ‘false endpoints,’ a problem-solving style longer necessarily the right answer.more typical of harried adults than of playful And so we need to be able toyoungsters. False endpoints are avoided explore the possibilities and bethrough play, Bateson wrote, because players open. If we can bring play moreare having so much fun they keep noodling into our adult lives, start movingaway at a problem and might well arrive at our creativity into our adult lives, there are somesomething better than the first, good-enough great benefits to that.”solution.” —ALLISON ARDEN, publisher of Advertising Age —ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG, and author of The Book of Doing “Taking Play Seriously,” The New York Times, Feb. 17, 2008

IMPEDIMENTS TO PLAY I think
there is an assembly-line [Our culture] is not really what I mentality that if you don’t keep would call conducive to play, so the assembly line moving, if you you’d have to make a conscious don’t keep having very specific choice to have fun, and that’s guidelines as to work output, if very hard. And oddly enough, it there isn’t a clock to punch, takes a lot of discipline, because people aren’t going to get things you have to give yourself done. And I think that wise permission.”management transcends that.” —STUART BROWN, founder of the National —BERNIE DEKOVEN, game designer, fun Institute for Play theorist and author

IMPEDIMENTS TO PLAY (cont’d.) The
question that drivesQuantifiable me [Millennials’] work is ‘What do I need to respond to?’ rather thanGTD syndrome ‘What should I create today?’ They swat emails that fly at them, sit in meetings that they unthinkingly agreed to two monthsLife in real time earlier, take phone calls seeking their approval or advice. But they don’t build.Vanquished boredom They don’t sit and think.” —PRIYA PARKER, founder of visioning and strategy firm Thrive Labs,The adultification of kids’ play CNN.com, March 2012

IMPEDIMENTS TO PLAY (cont’d.)Quantifiable meGTD
syndromeLife in real timeVanquished boredomThe adultification of kids’ play Play is just a natural thing that animals do, but somehow we’ve driven it out of kids.” —KATHY HIRSH-PASEK, developmental psychologist at Temple University, The New York Times, Jan. 5, 2011

MANIFESTATIONS PLAY IN THE BUSINESS
MODELRecognizing the benefits of play, some high-profile companies inject playinto their employees’ lives, beyond simply outfitting workplaces withbasketball courts or pool tables.

WHAT IT MEANSThere’s a real
desire to see unstructuredplay extend from childhood well intoadulthood. Nine in 10 American andBritish adults agreed that “play shouldnot only be a part of children’s lives butadults’ lives, too.” No wonder: There’s awistfulness and nostalgia attached to playand everything t hat it suggests, with 78%saying they wish they could recapturesome of the imagination, fun andcreativity of childhood and 74% sayingthey miss being able to play like a childwith no rules, boundaries or restrictions.

WHAT IT MEANS (cont’d.)Society has
become so automated and Play isn’t just for children. The idearesults-oriented that most of us don’t of play is closely related tohave the time or inclination to take imagination, inventiveness, and thatforays outside the structured framework. deep sense of absorption. … Read virtually anyBut in a quickly changing world, people account of creativity, in the humanities or the sciences, and you’ll find mentions of thewho aren’t afraid to rewrite the rules or relevance of daydreaming, fooling around withrethink the status quo are those who get possibilities…. The argument here isn’t just thata head. Explains Allison Arden: “When we need to let little kids play so they’ll beyou go through the shorthand of creating creative when they’re older, but that play, orthings based on what other people have something quite close to it, should be a part ofdone, you oftentimes miss the a teenager’s or adult’s life, too.”opportunity or lose the recognition ofwhat you have the capability of doingyourself.” —ALFIE KOHN, author and lecturer, “The Point of Play Is That It Has No Point,” Big Think, Dec. 3, 2011

WHAT IT MEANS (cont’d.)Injecting play
into everyday life—doing things that bring joy, regardless of how closely theseactivities are aligned with an end goal—can help to foster discovery and exploration, bothessential for creative economies. “Play is the greatest natural resource in a creative economy,”declared Laura Seargeant Richardson, an experience designer at Frog Design, in a keynote speechat MIT’s Sandbox Summit in 2010. She expanded on this in The Atlantic last May: In the future, economies won’t be driven by financial capital or even the more narrowly focused scientific capital, but by play capital as well. I predict countries that take play seriously, not only nurturing it in education and the workforce but also formalizing it as a national effort, will quickly rise in the world order. This is not Twister in the boardroom. Rather it’s what Jeremy Levy, a physics professor at the University of Pittsburgh, would call “a highly advanced form of play. You need to not know what the end stage is in order to get somewhere new.” —AUSTIN KLEON, artist and author of Steal Like an Artist

WHAT IT MEANS (cont’d.)Marketers that
speak to the value of play are tapping into an innate human desire. Brands canhelp people reimagine their world and become more active participants in it through play. Thismay mean helping consumers see their day-to-day environment through a more playful lens—asKit Kat has done—or encouraging people to dial down the constant stream of information, imagesand digital conversations so they can focus on real-world doing.Employers seeking to foster play in business need to move away from product without process—focusing on each layer of the problem at hand instead of trying to steamroll through to a specificresult. The willingness to abandon a creation in favor of new, better ideas and solutions, crucialto the play mentality, is a key to nurturing innovation in the business world. Never turn down an opportunity to have fun. Have faith in fun. If you’re really enjoying yourself, then entertain the possibility that you might be doing something that’s good for yourself.” —BERNIE DEKOVEN, game designer, fun theorist and author